Recruitment Rises 12.5% Despite Ongoing Challenges

The Defense Department’s armed services branches recruited 12.5% more people in 2024 than in the year prior in spite of a difficult and indifferent recruiting market.

Katie Helland Director of Military Accessions Policy Katie Helland employment speaks to members of the media throughout a panel on fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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While speaking at a multiservice panel on 2025 recruiting concerns at the Pentagon earlier this week, Director of Military Accession Policy Katie Helland said that the services increased the number of employees from 200,000 in FY 2023 to 225,000 in FY 2024, which ended September 30.

Additionally, she said, the services had a 35% increase in composed agreements, and the active elements’ delayed entry program began FY 2025 with a 10% larger pool.

” [The Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the services will continue to develop off the momentum that we have actually gained in 2024,” Helland said.

” Nevertheless,” she continued, “we require to remain meticulously optimistic about the future recruiting operations as we continue to hire in a market that has low youth propensity to serve, restricted familiarity with military chances, a competitive labor market and a declining eligibility amongst young adults.”

Helland elaborated on those obstacles by discussing that, for the very first time given that the metric has been tracked, most young people have actually never thought about the alternative of serving in the armed force.

The factors behind that are multifold, Helland said. Young Americans have less ties to friends or employment family members who have served in the . There is a declining presence of veterans in our society. Approximately 77% of people in between the ages of 17 and 24 need some kind of waiver to serve due to any variety of disqualifications.

To counter such difficulties, Helland said the armed force has actually executed a medical pilot program that enables recruits to join the armed force without a waiver for many health conditions – provided they satisfy specific requirements. Additionally, there are service member prep courses that prepare recruits to meet the exhausting requirements of military service. Moreover, DOD is looking for to reconnect with youth and their influencers by showing them the worth of serving.

” The next generation of Americans to serve need to know that there has actually never been a much better time for them to select military service,” Helland said.

Panel Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder helps with a panel on financial year 2025 recruiting objectives at the Pentagon, Oct. 30, 2024.
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” Youth today seek a larger function in their lives and desire tasks where they have greater participation in decision-making and can develop a direct concrete effect,” she continued. “Military service offers all of this.”

Explaining that U.S. military service offers more than 250 occupations and that it represents one of the most highly educated organizations throughout the world and across all pay grades, Helland employment stated the Defense Department is striving to counter the story that signing up with the armed force is an alternative to attending college or “an alternative of last resort.”

” We are working to reframe this narrative so that Americans understand that military service is a pathway to higher education and profession opportunities while defending democracy and the freedoms we hold dear,” Helland stated.

She included that DOD is reframing this story. For instance, the department’s Joint Advertising Marketing research and Studies program will soon release a project to construct familiarity with the American public about the worth of military service. Plans are also continuing to have adult influencers advocate for military service.